Virtually all Russian and Ukrainian refugee Jews ordered expelled by the Polish Government have left Polish soil, their leave to remain having expired yesterday.
The expulsion order involved a number variously estimated between 15,000 and 20,000; Included in this number are several thousand Jews who had secured passports and American vise and are awaiting the reopening in the United States of the Polish quota.
Yesterday marked the expiration of the term granted the refugees for voluntary departure, on pain of arrest and internment. Several thousand Jews, fearing to remain in Warsaw were obliged to violate publicly the Sabbath, many orthodox Jews riding to the station in cabs and other conveyances which carried their belongings. Others went on foot from all parts of the city to the station, the streets through which they passed were lined with friends who came to wish them Godspeed on their journey to Nowhere.
The scene at the station was strikingly reminescent of a hasty war-time evacuation. The exiled Jews were huddled near their baggage, waiting for room in compartments, as one train after another departed carrying its human cargo of travellers without a destination.
Fearing arrest if they returned to the city, many of the refugees spent the night at the station waiting for morning trains to convey them to countries that had promised a temporary asylum. These countries include Jugo Slavia, and to a very limited extent, Germany, which has undertaken to admit 300 refugees.
The Soviet authorities, through the Jewish Section of the Communist Party, directed its representatives in Warsaw to facilitate the return of Jews seeking readmission to Russia, granting amnesty to those that had left Russia illegally.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
